


Study Date on Luna

by Deriveress



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Confusion, Early Days, Early in Canon, Gen, Studying, University, Young River Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29685090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deriveress/pseuds/Deriveress
Summary: It’s the second time the mysterious River Song has sent the Doctor a message for help. This time he is ready to aid her in a dangerous adventure… only to find himself faced with a university student who needs help studying for her exam. Both don’t really know what to do with such a young version of the other.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Study Date on Luna

**Author's Note:**

> I am not in a good place right now. There’s no one I can talk to about it and the metaphorical walls are closing in. How do I deal with my problems? I try to write warm, fuzzy stories about River and the Doctor, end up with something cruel and terrifying and edit most of the gore or, in this case, angst out. So… for me, this is positively fluffy, but your mileage may vary.  
> On a lighter note: This story fits into the show’s canon (but not the books’) if you suspend your disbelief a little… or maybe quite a bit. Set between “Victory of the Daleks” and “The Time of Angels”, the Doctor meets River for the second time here. For her, it’s also the second meeting – the first one since “Let’s Kill Hitler”. Why did she know Ten? Because she met him a few times, had to erase his memory and forgot about it. It makes a lot of sense... if you really don’t think about it at all. Sorry. I wanted young Doctor and young River, so I wrote myself some.

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and onto a cushion, which slipped to the left and almost sent him to the floor. It wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever stepped into out of his ship, but it certainly wasn’t what he’d expected. Landing about 30 centimetres away from a greyish green wall was another thing he hadn’t expected. Both things together didn’t mark a great start to this adventure and he caught himself wanting to grumble to Amy about it.

Funny how fast he’d taken to the young woman. No… actually, it was quite obvious. Amy was clever, eager to impress and brave. Even if he had taken the time to actually look for a new friend instead of focusing on the first face this face had seen, she would have been the obvious choice to whisk away. He didn’t really know yet what he really liked, but Amy was agreeable enough to different settings of adventures, not hindering his exploration of his new personality in the slightest.

But even he had standards. Amy’s excitability notwithstanding, he wasn’t willing to take her into something as dangerous as an adventure with River Song. Bad enough that he’d taken Donna the first time around. He wasn’t about to risk taking someone with almost no experience with other cultures on a possible war field. And so, as soon as he’d read her request for help on the psychic paper, he’d brought Amy to a nice beach resort, set her up with unlimited credit and had told her he needed to do some repairs on the TARDIS. He was lucky she didn’t know him better yet.

At this point his musings were interrupted by the voice of the woman who had called him here. ‘Sweetie, are you coming out or are you fine just staring at my wall?’ River sounded… irritated.

Curiosity piqued, trying to flatten hair he didn’t really remember the look of, the Doctor shuffled out of the space between TARDIS and wall, only to find himself in a bedroom. It didn’t really look like a room he would have assigned to the brilliant, secretive person he’d met once before, but he didn’t really have time to take in more than the colour scheme before his eyes landed on River.

She was sitting on the bed, cross-legged, marking a page in a book with her finger and frowning at him as if he wasn’t behaving as expected. He probably wasn’t, seeing as he had no idea why she’d called him. ‘Well?’ She still sounded slightly cross with him.

‘Well’, the Doctor hedged. “Well” could mean a lot of things. Apart from the obvious use as a noun, one might use it to describe something well done. Or to fit well, just like the shorts he was doing his best not to look at. It was also a great word if one wanted to bide time. ‘Um.’

River stopped looking cross, now she only looked tired and slightly confused, gesticulating with the book. ‘Sit down, would you? You can sit on the floor or over there.’ “Over there” was a desk buried under books with a very futuristic and hard-looking chair, while “on the floor” was a mixed assembly of cushions next to where the TARDIS had landed. Oops. Hopefully, he hadn’t landed on any. It was obvious where River preferred to sit – if not perched atop her bed – so he also sat down on top of the cushions. Pretty comfy, a probing bounce told him. Also, a good view of the room and River.

Seeing that he was settled, she started: ‘So, you can help me studying the history of the first wars between the Gordinians and the Algomans. I always mix up their leaders.’

The Doctor could feel his eyebrows wandering up to his hairline. ‘Studying? You called me here for _studying_?’

River stared at him, unimpressed. ‘You did say I could call you whenever I needed you. “If you ever need help, don’t hesitate to call, I will be there.” This is me needing help.’

‘But, but, but… I thought… I thought this was going to be an adventure! Lots of running, people shooting at us, doing clever things?’

‘I can shoot at you if you want.’ She said it with a grin, like an inside joke. ‘And I wouldn’t mind doing one clever thing later on, too.’ He didn’t get it, especially not the wink afterwards, but thankfully, River was back on track, trying to make sense of the conversation. ‘Why, do we usually only do the adventure part?’

In his frustration, the Doctor felt his voice going higher, a bit like it used to do. ‘I don’t know, I haven’t done “usually” yet!’

‘Well, neither have I!’, River shot back, her voice suddenly very loud. ‘So, if you don’t feel like helping me study for my exam in _seventeen_ hours, get back to future me and _figure it out_!’ She closed her eyes, chest heaving, apparently startled herself by the volume of her outburst.

The Doctor used that few moments to look at her. _Really_ look at her and the scene around him. She looked older than the last time he’d seen her; quite impossible, but maybe she’d had some work done later on. How much younger could an operation make a human possibly look without changing too much of their facial structure? Surely not too much. He estimated that she had no more than ten years left for any kind of procedure to make her look as young as the last time he’d seen her. Less than ten years to go… She also looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, make-up slightly smeared where it was supposed to conceal them.

The room around them was – apparently – her student dwelling, not too small but positively cramped thanks to the TARDIS. The wall was painted the colour of peas boiled until their structural integrity decided to give out. River had done her best to hide it behind bookcases and, to his delight, old-fashioned cork boards filled with notes. He could see at least three places where pictures had obviously been removed – another picture lay face-down on her bedside table. The air in the room smelled stale; even though she’d obviously aired it out, the smells lingered: old coffee, something saccharinely sweet and human sweat. River was wearing fresh clothes, so she had made herself and her room presentable, but it was obvious that she had spent a lot of time studying.

It was a strange, small-scale need for help. Nothing really at stake but a good grade. _But_ she’d asked him because at some point in the future he’d promised her to always come whenever she needed help. No matter how boring archaeology was, his annoyance didn’t really outweigh the fact that last time, she’d saved his life and that of four thousand other people. She’d sacrificed her life for his and now he was making a fuss about spending a few hours going through – probably horribly wrong – transcripts.

Shame settled in his gut. He looked away before River could open her eyes and see him stare. ‘Alright, I’ll help you. But be warned, I’ll tell you if I find any errors in your books.’

‘Thanks’, River mumbled. She seemed to feel a bit awkward about their exchange, too. The Doctor gave her a tentative smile which was answered in kind. ‘I’ll still have to write down what the textbook says, though, even if it’s complete bollocks. I’ve decided to graduate summa cum laude.’

It sounded so optional, her voice so completely sure of her academic proficiency, that he had to laugh in delight. Yes, there was the brilliant woman he’d seen last time. Dependable in a crisis, yet also book-smart. And… ‘You’re British! And not from this century!’

River, in the process of finally opening the one book she’d been holding on her lap the whole time, eyed him curiously. ‘You don’t know? How far back _are_ you?’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, how young… how… how long do you know me?’

‘This is the second time I’ve met you.’

He could see the surprise all over her face, carefully supressed the moment after. And then she started to grin broadly. ‘Shit. For me, too! So, we _both_ don’t know who we are to each other? Oh, I wish we had the time to find out!’

Of course, they didn’t. The afternoon slowly turned into evening (not that sunset would be for another two weeks, but he did feel the passing of time) while River told him meticulously and completely in accordance with her textbooks – which were _mostly_ correct – about the rise of two empires in the same solar systems. Both had found out about each other only when they’d developed interplanetary travel and soon waged three wars against each other, all of them separated only by weeks. And both empires had been so effective in their annihilation of the enemy that they’d devasted most of their opponent’s planet, plunging them back to the iron age. Three thousand years later, both civilisations had reached the space age at the same time _again_ , this time siding with races from outside their solar systems. River’s course closed with the end of the second wave of wars; history had started to repeat himself, until twin revolutions on both planets had overthrown their government and forced peace negotiations, overseen by a neutral party of aliens.

‘I still don’t understand why they didn’t do away with their figurehead king when they overthrew the government’, River grumbled hours later. ‘Doesn’t really make sense from a revolutionary point of view.’ Like the Doctor, she was a fidgeter. They had both changed positions quite a few times; at the moment, she was sitting on the chair, chin on it’s back, while the Doctor was lying on the floor with his feet on her bed. She’d had two of the sweet drinks the Doctor had smelled earlier and was bouncing with caffeine, while he had drunk half a dozen cups of tea. Working together was as easy as last time, easier even without the threat of death in the shadows.

‘I bet you know a lot about revolutions.’ They shared a smile, then the Doctor cleared his throat and went back to lecture mode. ‘He was actually quite liked and tried to negotiate for peace in the beginning. _And_ the inner circle knew the title was going to die out with him anyway, seeing as he was homosexual and they were decades away from artificial impregnation.’

‘No, that can’t be right.’ River pulled out a book from the bottom of the tower on her desk and started digging through the pages furiously. ‘I _know_ he was married to a woman. He had to fight for that marriage for three years because she wasn’t befitting of his rank! Why would he do that if he didn’t love her?’

‘Well, it was quite a daring thing to do! You know, Mirette was actually his secret half-sister who he desperately tried to save from a life of poverty or being sent off to war.’

River stared at him for ten seconds before she found her voice again. ‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘No, it’s true! He did marry his sister. I’m quite sure they never thought of each other as husband and wife. Some marriages are a matter of necessity, not love.’ The Doctor nodded along to his own sage advice. ‘Though I’m sure he loved her very much in the familial sense.’

She blinked, stared at him some more. Then: ‘I don’t believe you.’

The Doctor sighed. ‘Okay. How about this? I’ll take you to Gordinus a few weeks before the revolution started. You can see it with your own eyes. Will you believe me then?’

‘Yes!’ He hadn’t even finished speaking when River jumped to her feet, pulled out a bag from beneath her bed and started haphazardly throwing things inside. ‘Oh, this will be great! That exam will be a piece of cake! And I always wanted to start a revolution.’ She stopped packing, smirking at him.

Oh, no, that wouldn’t do, not at all. ‘Now, River, there are some things you need to remember.’ He did his best to look as earnest as possible to show her how important his advice was. ‘We don’t meddle. It’s their war and people are going to die. You can’t go around changing history and – _is that a picture of Amy?!_ ’ It seemed that together with the bag, River had pulled out the frames missing from her walls. And the one face he could see clearly…

‘Yes, we’re friends’, River ground out. She looked a bit as if she had just bitten in a lemon. It didn’t make sense. At all. ‘Actually, we met because of you.’ Ah, that… wait, that still didn’t make any sense if she’d only seen him once before. River seemed to come to the same conclusion. ‘Ugh, will you just accept it’s spoilers?’ The Doctor nodded, a bit shaken, and River took her bag with trembling hands. ‘Alright, then let’s do this!’

‘Just remember, we’re not changing the course of history.’

‘Mhm. Do remind me, what species did that neutral party consist of?’

‘They’re not sure, but the general consensus is “probably human”.’

‘Ah. And how many outsiders were in that party?’

‘Two.’

River smiled, a brilliant thing that caused a strange, warm feeling in his chest. ‘In that case, I’m sure you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!  
> If you found mistakes, any kind of mistake, please feel free to tell me; yell at or mock me, I don’t care. I spent at least half an hour with Merriam Webster, looking for synonyms, colloquialisms or ‘that one word at the tip of my tongue’. English is my second language. I’m proficient in it, but there will always be room for improvement, so please, do point out any mistakes you find.


End file.
